I’ve been running plex for a long time now, using Infuse for movie playback thanks to its better playback engine. Now with iCloud sync, can I get rid of plex? Can I manage a library in the same way without having to maintain a plex server locally? I love plex but the ability to have one less server to worry about would be great and I don’t use many of the extra plex features it offers.
I’m asking because unfortunately my NAS is currently out of action so I can’t actually test this for myself.
Yes you can if you put all your media into one of the supported cloud storage providers and have Infuse access it all from the cloud. I’ve tried to make the switch with Plex Cloud (which was a really bumpy experience) but then when I tried it with Infuse it worked with barely any hiccups. Now my 1k NAS is offline.
I can’t put my media into the cloud, there’s way too much. I am happy to keep using my NAS, I just don’t want to run the Plex server if I can avoid it. It sounds like I can still do this and can use infuse exclusively now, which will be great.
Sure you can. Infuse works great without Plex. However Plex offers a great capability to maintain Metadata
If metadata is synced now over iCloud (or will be) then I guess if I don’t need the ability to modify and manage metadata manually then it’ll be ok. I guess the answer is to try once my NAS is back up and running and see if it suits my needs
After the upgrade, I can’t play my movies anymore using the Plex library connected to Infuse.
If I manually add the library without using Plex, it works properly
I would love to remove Plex server too, but what holds me back is the advanced user management missing in Infuse (I need to control individually what the children can see or not from the library)
Yeah if you need that then it’s still best if you keep using Plex.
My Infuse 6 Pro is linked to my Plex library. Can I now simply delete the Plex Media Server or must I also connect Infuse to my media files by some other means e.g. SMB?
I,ve changed to plex (server and plex app). Plex is so much better as infuse. I love it an works for me without problems. The next list is unlimited, in infuse it is limit to 15 items. Why had the developper of infuse the idea to limit this list?
I wish we at least had a toggle or a slider where we get to choose how many up-next items we want to have available. Plus being able to remove an item from up-next is also an important feature that is still missing.
Fingers crossed for these features!
For me it was this missing feature the reason why I’ve searched for an alternate software. So I find plex and was very impressed. infuse is for me worthless if I have only 15 items in the up next list. I’m watching of each tv show only one episode per week. So I’m watching more than 30 tv shows in the week.
Infuse 6 - Can I now replace Plex?
You could have dropped it sooner, too.
Consider the fact that you do not need to manage a library on a server, but instead have a decentralized, multi-master library, duplicated on each device. That means no more server management headaches like downtime, delaying OS updates because you don’t have the time should the update go sour–none of that and less. It’s a fantastic implementation, and far more robust (redundancies on every device) than a single point of failure, i.e., a server. This is exponentially more useful when paired with a cloud storage service, as you get the remote capabilities as well. For the price of a storage provider like Google Drive, I’ve gone from managing hardware, buying storage when it inevitably runs out, to just paying 10 bucks a month for what is essentially a hard drive subscription for data I ultimately could could not care to lose should the provider no longer consider their service valuable.
I’m not saying that Plex is bad or anything, as I liked it enough to buy a lifetime years ago, but it just got to be too much (spreading themselves thin, entirely misguided, the fiasco that was Plex Cloud, and finally the poor player). There are still obvious strengths to the platform, such as its library handling and tighter, more complete navigation around TV Shows, but the balance of simplicity and power offered by Infuse with so little overhead outweighs those strengths. IMO, Infuse has maintained such a solid and purpose-focused software, and a leadership and level of communication for its software and to its community, that I genuinely could not care if they take their time to roll out new features. They know better than any of us where they fall short and where they shine. There’s nothing more satisfying than building on a great foundation, one feature at a time; sure, I can’t claim to know that their software is not in fact a gigantic spaghetti bowl of half-shaved yaks and temporary TODOs that outlive the author, but there’s just so much indicating the opposite in these forums that I’m willing to speak on conjecture alone.
All that to say, some other person mentioned that Infuse is worthless because the Up Next displays only 15 items, and all I can think is how absurd that sounds. You’re willing to keep a computer on, manage an OS, manage the software that runs on it, the software that runs on the clients, pay the electricity, and occupy some nook in your house so your Up Next list has more than 15 items? Absurd. Give me a hassle-free, decentralized product any day. I’d rather dedicate that time to my family, or flame wars on the Internet.
No it is not absurd, I can,t work with a media center which dont shows me all tv shows which next episode has to play. Absurd is that the developper has limit this list. I cant see any reason.
My hope was that version 6 solve this. But nothing changing. So this was it with infuse. The up next list is a elementary feature. And if it not works as espected then I cant use it.
danemacmillan. Thanks for your complete and thought provoking response.
I switched to Infuse because Plex has trouble with some files : the video will freeze while the audio continues or it buffers and tells me my network is too slow. Just last night I had that issue , switched to Infuse and it played flawlessly. Now I have convinced myself that Infuse better meets my needs I want to delete a possibly redundant Plex Media Server.
I had not thought of storing my media on something like GoogleDrive. I had always preferred local storage e.g. my 1st gen Apple TV and only recently switched to network storage but even that was using a wired connection from my iMac to my Apple TV 4K. I take your point about hard drives filling up. I have a collection of old hard drives that I hate to throw away and use for archiving important files. Also, the idea of running Infuse without having to turn on my computer is attractive: convenient and energy saving.
Thanks again.
I guess what I’m trying to say to you–to use a cliché–is don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I get being frustrated to the point that things are either black or white, but what you’ve mentioned is something you should write in a feature request. I actually agree with you: I don’t think there should be a limit at all, and I know I’ve mentioned that in passing before in other discussions. I just think it’s excessive to say Infuse be damned because of this. Write up the feature request, or find the existing one, and support it.
I was there. I hosted PMS for around six years (both in-home and remote servers) before finally having enough, and several more years before that on XBMC. It wasn’t all bad, but it’s a blackhole and takes up so much time. There comes a point where you just want something to work for you and not the opposite; I think the only difference between technical and non-technical people is their tolerance for these menial, time-sucking technical chores. In early 2017 I migrated all my media to Google Drive, sold or gave away around eight hard drives, a hard drive bay, a dedicated home server, and various other things, and I just felt a weight lifted. My truly important data accounts for around 600GB, which I keep encrypted copies of everywhere; everything else is just media for entertainment, no backups, which I’ve managed to keep in one place for a well-spent 10/mo. Now I just point Infuse to it.
Seriously, if you’re on the fence, figure out what your important data is, fit it on a single hard drive, then make encrypted copies of it and leave them all over. I don’t know what you’re archiving, or what grand total of space your important data requires, but I know the process of evaluating, determining important vs non-important data, then consolidating and ultimately ridding my home of all this stuff felt good.